Hey! I'm a complete technophobe and have just got a acer aspire one for chrimbo installed with linux. What would be the best internet security for my netbook and how do i install it?? Any info would be greatly appreciated!

What exactly do you mean with "internet security"? A firewall, virus scanner?

There are not that many virusses for linux but if you want to be sure, you could try ClamAv.

A firewall comes built-in with the linux kernel (the core programme that runs the whole stuff on it and makes you use the hardware, i.e. dvd players, mouse, keyboard, monitor, etc.). But if you'd like to use a front-end, you could try Firestarter, which is easy and quite nice. If you would like to know whether your firewall is working, type

in the console, provided that you know how to open one. Just press Alt+F2 and type xterm. You then get a screen where you can type the line above and then close it by hitting Enter. You should then see some output and then find out whether it is running (which it probably is).

Linux comes in different flavours, what distribution is pre-installed on your laptop: ubuntu, opensuse, fedora, ...? If you could tell us that, we could help and guide you through the installation steps more easily. Compiling from the source code works for all distributions, but it might be easier through a user interface if we know what distribution you use.

Enjoy the linux experience and ask questions if you have any.

Welcome to LQ

there is also avast antivirus

Now idea about the distro you have but it may have some firewall tool. If iptables is installed then you can manually build a firewall script or get one of many from out on the internet from a google search. Or there are firewall tools with a gui interface to speed up the process. So many choices. None are easy to describe to install other than reading the developers install and readme docs. Then usually do a very good job of this for you.

For virus stuff then clamav. There are a few linux virus but have yet to ever see one. I would so are based on the vulneriabities of earlier days of unix/linux. Which developers have learned and fixed.

Brian

Instead of trying to provide GNU/Linux equivalents for commercial products and mcrsft-isms I think it's good to focus on "hardening" as the generic term for securing a machine and state that security requires the machine owner and users to actively chase issues and that security is a continuous effort. Every major distribution should provide you with documentation about securing your machine and as far as I know there is no all-encompassing tool for securing a machine (OK, maybe except for Bastille-linux but I don't us that and Fedora 10's new security gizmo but I haven't seen that yet) and you should get used to that. If your distribution does not provide you with documentation you could start with the UNIX Security Checklist v2.0: http://www.cert.org/tech_tips/unix_s...cklist2.0.html and for instance the Debian Security HOWTO: http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/se...-debian-howto/. One of the most efficient tools to show the initial security posture of the machine is Tiger. That's not all but a lot of threads can be found here at LQ on the subject, so you're invited to do some searching and reading.

The Acer Aspire One comes with Linpus Lite (new one to me), which appears to have a customised "user friendly" interface, in the same way as the eee-pc stock install.

I am going to install this on a virtual machine, as I'm curious/bored will let you know what firewalls etc it comes with.

Well, I downloaded Linpus Lite (which is based on Fedora Core 8) and installed it on a virtual machine.

I hope that the installation on the Acer Aspire One is better than the one that comes from Linpus!

The installation created a default account "linpus" which starts with no password. Additionally the root account has no password. These are things that I would recommend changing asap.

There is an application in the Settings area called Password (called "User Password" in the advanced desktop mode). This application allows you to set a password for the linpus account.

To change the root password you need to open a Terminal and type:
and follow the prompts. Don't forget these passwords!

To change to the root user in a Terminal, type:
If you have changed the root password, you will need to supply it.

Then run
Please let us know what output you get from the above command.

My installation did not have iptables, which I had to install manually!

Once installed, iptables --list (run as root) supplied:This (to me) says that there are no firewall rules set.

common sence

Basically you're right but could you expand that a wee bit for those that don't know what "common sense" encompasses wrt using GNU/Linux from an administrator and user point of view?